After driving students more than 800,000 miles to and from school during the last 40 years, Montezuma-Cortez School District Re-1 bus driver Vonda Elliott has decided to turn in her bus keys in December.
And so much has changed in transportation for Re-1 in those four decades.
Elliott was 19 years old when she had a miscarriage while carrying twins, and after the doctor incorrectly told her she was never going to be able to have children, she decided to find a job where she would be around kids to fill that void.
Her brother, who was the transportation director for Re-1 in 1972, told her to come in to apply, and after a two-hour driving test, she began driving her first bus route that same afternoon.
Her pay as a beginning bus driver in 1972 was $3 an hour, and her 115-mile route took four hours to complete — $12 a day as a school bus driver.
But there was more to the job than just that $12 a day.
“I did it just because I wanted to be around kids, and it was something to do, and then it became a job because I needed the extra money,” Elliott said.
The starting pay for a Re-1 bus driver now is $12.17 an hour and tops out at $16.67.
Not included in the more than 800,000 miles where she has taken students to and from school are the hundreds of field trips and the 12 years where she drove buses for summer school.
The buses back then, she remembered, were nightmares to operate. She said they had no good heaters, needed a 2x4 to press the accelerator, brakes and clutch because the driver's area was designed for a long-legged man.
She said with a good tail wind, she could get that bus up to a maximum speed of 35 mph.
By contrast, she says buses today are “wonderful” with good heaters and automatic buttons to open the doors at stops.
“The bus is my baby. I love my job. I love my kids,” the 59-year-old said.
But there is one thing that isn't wonderful.
“I can't say I like getting up at 4 a.m. to come to work,” she said.
She recalled the Beach Boy's hit song “Help me Rhonda,” which the students she took to and from school substituted Vanda for Rhonda.
Her bus route takes a combined 6.5 hours to pick up students in the morning and drop them off in the afternoon.
She leaves the bus barn at 5:45 a.m. and finishes her morning route at about 8:20 a.m. She then picks up high school students at 3:40 p.m. before picking up middle school students 10 minutes later.
However, she mentioned she makes two trips in the morning and two trips in the afternoon and said the year she was hired was when the school district decided to implement the dual route system.
She also recalled driving the bookmobile every week from school to school when she was not driving students to and from school.
“There was no heater in it,” she said. “It blew cold air. I have never driven anything like it since. It was built like a UPS truck.”
She also bused students to Kemper Elementary School for lunches and then bused them back to their school site.
Elliott had been a bus driver for eight years when the doctor's diagnosis proved to be incorrect and she gave birth to a daughter.
While pregnant she continued to drive students to and from school, and remembers taking her infant daughter with her on the bus when the weather was not too cold.
When her daughter got older she became a passenger in her mom's bus.
Elliott said her daughter sat or maybe slept right behind her as she made her rounds. She said her daughter slept because she too had to get up at 4 a.m. so she could have a ride to school.
She said her stepdaughter and both of her grandchildren have been passengers or are still passengers on her bus.
She said she is now picking up third-generation children and remembers when their parents and grandparents were passengers.
She said the stops are at the same houses and locations of 40 years ago and added the third-generation students who grew up in the county are well behaved, though the ones from other areas try to create problems with their attitudes.
“They are still living where their parents or grandparents lived,” she said in explaining how she knows they are third-generation students.
Elliott said her mother was supportive of her decision to drive a school bus for a living, but mentioned her mom was also on the school board. Her father was no longer alive when she first decided to take on bus driving.
Elliott has mixed views on the change from switching to a four-day school week from a five-day school week.
She said she loved having a three-day weekend, but said having that extra day off means a loss of pay of more than $400 a month.
“I like the time off, but I like the pay too,” she said.
She said early in her bus driving days she knew another bus driver, Dean Kirk, and while Kirk only drove one hour a day, he also worked as a school employee at the Downey building which he did for close to 40 years.
She said he challenged her to do the same, and said that is a big reason why she wants to continue to be a Re-1 bus driver through December.
In her first four to five months as a district bus driver, Elliott remembers driving through snowdrifts north of Cortez, which resulted in three broken headlights.
She said the rural snow plows came out after she already started her route.
Elliott said she never thought bus driving was going to be her career when growing up and instead wanted to be a stenographer, but that required college, and her family could not afford to send her to school.
She also thought about becoming a beautician.
She is also the only Re-1 bus driver who remembers where the two previous bus barns were located, including the one where the current Cortez Middle School sits.
Elliott added that there is a misconception about buses being dangerous or difficult to drive and in reality said they are the safest vehicles one can be in.
She said buses are better equipped to handle bad roads or roads that have snow on them because the tires on buses hold close to the road.
“The thing that concerns me are the other drivers,” she said, adding many drivers for some reason do not want to be behind a bus. When making a stop to pick up or drop off students, Elliott often waits for traffic to pass before putting the stop sign out.
Elliott said it never crossed her mind to try to find a different job.
“I do love to drive buses,” she said. “I like it, “I can go home (between shifts) and take a nap. If I need to do something else I can do it.
She also has been involved in numerous bus rodeos or precision bus driving where driving skills are judged.
She was named the best bus driver in the Re-1 District five times and took home a second place in the statewide bus rodeo contest in 1988.
Elliott said she may volunteer to be a substitute bus driver if the buses are ones that use automatic transmission because driving those with standard transmissions and clutches are too difficult.
She mentioned that she is going to keep her summer job where she transports rafts to a Durango resort, but said this is a temporary job that lasts three months.
“I drive buses year round, and I do plan on keeping that (summer) job, but it is seasonal,” she said.
Reach Michael Maresh at michaelm@cortezjournal.com